SYNOPSIS
dialog --clear
dialog --create-rc file
dialog --print-maxsize
dialog common-options box-options
DESCRIPTION
Dialog is a program that will let you to present a variety
of questions or display messages using dialog boxes from a
shell script. These types of dialog boxes are implemented
(though not all are necessarily compiled into dialog):
calendar, checklist, fselect, gauge, infobox,
inputbox, menu, msgbox (message), password, radi
olist, tailbox, tailboxbg, textbox, timebox, and
yesno (yes/no).
You can put more than one dialog box into a script:
- Use the --and-widget token to force Dialog to proceed
to the next dialog unless you have pressed ESC to
cancel, or
- Simply add the tokens for the next dialog box, making
a chain. Dialog stops chaining when the return code
from a dialog is nonzero, e.g., Cancel or No.
OPTIONS
Common Options
--aspect ratio
This gives you some control over the box dimensions
when using auto sizing (specifying 0 for height and
width). It represents width / height. The default
is 9, which means 9 characters wide to every 1 line
high.
--backtitle backtitle
Specifies a backtitle string to be displayed on the
backdrop, at the top of the screen.
--beep Sound the audible alarm each time the screen is
refreshed.
--beep-after
Beep if input is interrupted, e.g., by a control/C.
--begin y x
Specify the position of the upper left corner of a
dialog box on the screen.
--cancel-label string
'r', reset by 'R'. Underline is set by 'u', reset
by 'U'. The settings are cumulative, e.g.,
"\Zb\Z1" makes the following text bright red.
Restore normal settings with "\Zn".
--cr-wrap
Interpret embedded newlines in the dialog text as a
newline on the screen. Otherwise, dialog will only
wrap lines where needed to fit inside the text box.
Even though you can control line breaks with this,
dialog will still wrap any lines that are too long
for the width of the box. Without cr-wrap, the
layout of your text may be formatted to look nice
in the source code of your script without affecting
the way it will look in the dialog.
--create-rc file
When dialog supports run-time configuration, this
can be used to dump a sample configuration file to
the file specified by file.
--defaultno
Make the default value of the yes/no box a No.
--default-item string
Set the default item in a menu box. Normally the
first item in the box is the default.
--exit-label string
Override the label used for "EXIT" buttons.
--extra-button
Show an extra button, between ok/cancel and help
buttons.
--extra-label string
Override the label used for "Extra" buttons.
--help Prints the help message to standard error. The
help message is printed if no options are given.
--help-button
Show a help-button after ok/cancel buttons, i.e.,
in checklist, radiolist and menu boxes. If --item-
help is also given, on exit the return status will
be the same as for the "Ok" button, and the item-
help text will be written to standard error after
the token "HELP". Otherwise, the return status
will indicate that the Help button was pressed, and
no message printed.
--max-input size
Limit input strings to the given size. If not
specified, the limit is 2000.
--no-cancel
--nocancel
Suppress the "Cancel" button in checklist, inputbox
and menu box modes. A script can still test if the
user pressed the ESC key to cancel to quit.
--no-collapse
Normally dialog converts tabs to spaces and reduces
multiple spaces to a single space for text which is
displayed in a message boxes, etc. Use this option
to disable that feature. Note that dialog will
still wrap text, subject to the --cr-wrap option.
--no-kill
Tells dialog to put the tailboxbg box in the back
ground, printing its process id to standard error.
SIGHUP is disabled for the background process.
--no-shadow
Suppress shadows that would be drawn to the right
and bottom of each dialog box.
--ok-label string
Override the label used for "OK" buttons.
--output-fd fd
Direct output to the given file descriptor. Most
dialog scripts write to the standard error, but
error messages may also be written there, depending
on your script.
--print-maxsize
Print the maximum size of dialog boxes, i.e., the
screen size, to the standard error. This may be
used alone, without other options.
--print-size
Prints the size of each dialog box to standard
error.
--print-version
Prints dialog's version to standard error. This
may be used alone, without other options.
--separate-output
For checklist widgets, output result one line at a
--size-err
Check the resulting size of a dialog box before
trying to use it, printing the resulting size if it
is larger than the screen. (This option is obso
lete, since all new-window calls are checked).
--sleep secs
Sleep (delay) for the given number of seconds after
processing a dialog box.
--stderr
Direct output to the standard error. This is the
default, since curses normally writes screen
updates to the standard output.
--stdout
Direct output to the standard output.
--tab-correct
Convert each tab character to one or more spaces.
Otherwise, tabs are rendered according to the
curses library's interpretation.
--tab-len n
Specify the number of spaces that a tab character
occupies if the "--tab-correct" option is given.
The default is 8.
--timeout secs
Timeout (exit with error code) if no user response
within the given number of seconds.
--title title
Specifies a title string to be displayed at the top
of the dialog box.
--trim eliminate leading blanks, trim literal newlines and
repeated blanks from message text.
--version
Same as "--print-version".
Box Options
All dialog boxes have at least three parameters:
text the caption or contents of the box.
height
the height of the dialog box.
width
the width of the dialog box.
date is printed in the form day/month/year.
--checklist text height width list-height [ tag item sta
tus ] ...
A checklist box is similar to a menu box; there are
multiple entries presented in the form of a menu.
Instead of choosing one entry among the entries,
each entry can be turned on or off by the user.
The initial on/off state of each entry is specified
by status. On exit, a list of the tag strings of
those entries that are turned on will be printed on
stderr.
--fselect filepath height width
The file-selection dialog displays a text-entry
window in which you can type a filename (or direc
tory), and above that two windows with directory
names and filenames.
Here filepath can be a filepath in which case the
file and directory windows will display the con
tents of the path and the text-entry window will
contain the preselected filename.
Use tab or arrow keys to move between the windows.
Within the directory or filename windows, use the
up/down arrow keys to scroll the current selection.
Use the space-bar to copy the current selection
into the text-entry window.
Typing any printable characters switches focus to
the text-entry window, entering that character as
well as scrolling the directory and filename win
dows to the closest match.
Use a carriage return or the "OK" button to accept
the current value in the text-entry window, or the
"Cancel" button to cancel.
--gauge text height width [percent]
A gauge box displays a meter along the bottom of
the box. The meter indicates the percentage. New
percentages are read from standard input, one inte
ger per line. The meter is updated to reflect each
new percentage. If stdin is XXX, then subsequent
lines up to another XXX are used for a new prompt.
The gauge exits when EOF is reached on stdin.
The percent value denotes the initial percentage
shown in the meter. If not specified, it is zero.
tialize the input string. When entering the
string, the BACKSPACE key can be used to correct
typing errors. If the input string is longer than
can fit in the dialog box, the input field will be
scrolled. On exit, the input string will be
printed on stderr.
--menu text height width menu-height [ tag item ] ...
As its name suggests, a menu box is a dialog box
that can be used to present a list of choices in
the form of a menu for the user to choose. Choices
are displayed in the order given. Each menu entry
consists of a tag string and an item string. The
tag gives the entry a name to distinguish it from
the other entries in the menu. The item is a short
description of the option that the entry repre
sents. The user can move between the menu entries
by pressing the UP/DOWN keys, the first letter of
the tag as a hot-key, or the number keys 1-9. There
are menu-height entries displayed in the menu at
one time, but the menu will be scrolled if there
are more entries than that. When dialog exits, the
tag of the chosen menu entry will be printed on
stderr. If the --help-button option is given, the
corresponding help text will be printed if the user
selects the help button.
--msgbox text height width
A message box is very similar to a yes/no box. The
only difference between a message box and a yes/no
box is that a message box has only a single OK but
ton. You can use this dialog box to display any
message you like. After reading the message, the
user can press the ENTER key so that dialog will
exit and the calling shell script can continue its
operation.
--passwordbox text height width [init]
A password box is similar to an input box, except
that the text the user enters is not displayed.
This is useful when prompting for passwords or
other sensitive information. Be aware that if any
thing is passed in "init", it will be visible in
the system's process table to casual snoopers.
Also, it is very confusing to the user to provide
them with a default password they cannot see. For
these reasons, using "init" is highly discouraged.
--radiolist text height width list-height [ tag item sta
tus ] ...
A radiolist box is similar to a menu box. The only
difference is that you can indicate which entry is
the tailboxbg widgets in the same process, polling
for updates. You may use a tab to traverse between
the widgets on the screen, and close them individu
ally, e.g., by pressing ENTER. Once the non-tail
boxbg widgets are closed, dialog forks a copy of
itself into the background, and prints its process
id if the --no-kill option is given.
NOTE: Older versions of dialog forked immediately
and attempted to update the screen individually.
Besides being bad for performance, it was unwork
able. Some older scripts may not work properly
with the polled scheme.
--textbox file height width
A text box lets you display the contents of a text
file in a dialog box. It is like a simple text
file viewer. The user can move through the file by
using the UP/DOWN, PGUP/PGDN and HOME/END keys
available on most keyboards. If the lines are too
long to be displayed in the box, the LEFT/RIGHT
keys can be used to scroll the text region horizon
tally. You may also use vi-style keys h, j, k, l
in place of the cursor keys, and B or N in place of
the pageup/pagedown keys. For more convenience,
vi-style forward and backward searching functions
are also provided.
--timebox text height [width hour minute second]
A dialog is displayed which allows you to select
hour, minute and second. If the values for hour,
minute or second are missing or negative, the cur
rent date's corresponding values are used. You can
increment or decrement any of those using the
left-, up-, right- and down-arrows. Use tab or
backtab to move between windows. On exit, the
result is printed in the form hour:minute:second.
--yesno text height width
A yes/no dialog box of size height rows by width
columns will be displayed. The string specified by
text is displayed inside the dialog box. If this
string is too long to fit in one line, it will be
automatically divided into multiple lines at appro
priate places. The text string can also contain
the sub-string "\n" or newline characters `\n´ to
control line breaking explicitly. This dialog box
is useful for asking questions that require the
user to answer either yes or no. The dialog box
has a Yes button and a No button, in which the user
can switch between by pressing the TAB key.
c) if the file in (b) is not found, try using the
GLOBALRC file determined at compile-time, i.e.,
/etc/dialogrc.
d) if the file in (c) is not found, use compiled in
defaults.
3. Edit the sample configuration file and copy it to some
place that dialog can find, as stated in step 2 above.
ENVIRONMENT
DIALOGRC Define this variable if you want to specify
the name of the configuration file to use.
DIALOG_CANCEL
DIALOG_ERROR
DIALOG_ESC
DIALOG_EXTRA
DIALOG_HELP
DIALOG_OK Define any of these variables to change the
exit code on Cancel (1), error (-1), ESC
(255), Extra (3), Help (2), or Ok (0).
Normally shell scripts cannot distinguish
between -1 and 255.
FILES
$HOME/.dialogrc default configuration file
DIAGNOSTICS
Exit status is subject to being overridden by environment
variables. Normally they are:
0 if dialog is exited by pressing the Yes or OK button.
1 if the No or Cancel button is pressed.
-1 if errors occur inside dialog or dialog is exited by
pressing the ESC key.
BUGS
Perhaps.
AUTHOR
Savio Lam (lam836@cs.cuhk.hk) - version 0.3, "dialog"
Stuart Herbert (S.Herbert@sheffield.ac.uk) - patch for
version 0.4
Man(1) output converted with
man2html